


Persistence of Memory

by scalpelsandhappiness



Category: Glee
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 22:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scalpelsandhappiness/pseuds/scalpelsandhappiness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rachel used to appreciate the city lights that always tried to intrude through her curtains, imagining them as a faint, humming buzz that she could reach out and touch.<br/>These nights, though, they just remind her that the Big Apple never sleeps, and she’s not doing so well in that respect, either.</p>
<p>Spoilers through 5.06, Moving Out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Persistence of Memory

**Author's Note:**

> This isn’t the first Glee fic I wanted to write – Kurt and Blaine were taking up space in my head, but then Rachel demanded some attention, as she frequently does. But this time she wasn’t as bratty as she usually is when she talks to me, and I decided she needed to go first.

She doesn’t remember Kurt or Santana telling her that they were throwing a party, but the loft is full of people.  Conversation ebbs and flows around her as she makes her way through the press of warm, laughing bodies – sharp sounds of dialogue, clinking glasses, the low, thrumming rush of shuffling feet.  Someone hands her a drink, and she brings it to her mouth without thought.

The heady, bitter taste of gin spreads over her tongue, and she pushes back the involuntary shudder and drinks it down in quick, steady gulps, chasing the sensation of bubbles on her tongue and the welcoming bite of quinine from the tonic. Ice clinks against her teeth as she drains her glass, and she sets it down on the tiny counter in the kitchen, her eyes drawn to the seething mass of humanity crowding her home.

Kurt and Blaine are slow dancing to fast music, and she smiles at the tender expression on Kurt’s face, his eyes dreamily half-closed as he sways with his fiancée.  Dani is chatting away with Elliot, her gestures intent and purposeful, while he laughs easily, shifting back and forth to the beat.

Santana sings along with the music, nodding her head as Mr. Schuester does one of his hip-hop inspired spins, and Evelyn and Carl – that nice couple from the Spotlight Diner last week – pull out their phones to share photos of their grandchildren.

Her head spins with the music and alcohol and disorientation, and the only thing that’s going to give the world reason at this point is to drink more and laugh and dance and –

“Rachel.”

But _there_ he is, finally, and the world makes sense again.  He smiles at her in that old familiar way, the look that tells her that he truly has no idea of who she is down to her core and what drives her, but he trusts that going along for the ride with her will bring them where they need to be. It feels like faith and devotion and dreams.

“Finn! I didn’t think you’d make it tonight!”

He shrugs, bending down his impossibly tall frame (and oh, it makes her feel so small and safe when he wraps an arm around her shoulders) and nudges a hip against hers.  “Been busy with school. You know how it is, right?”

“Do I,” she sighs. NYADA, and Funny Girl and her amazing, impossible New York life leave her days frenetically full in the best possible ways, but she still misses the days when the most important question was what songs they’d sing in Glee Club and if she had most of the solos.

He looks around at the crowd, soft brown eyes glowing in the low light. “But it looks like you’re doing ok. That’s important to know. I’ve been worried about you.”

And a creeping sense of wrongness steals over her. “Why should you be worried? Things are just _fine_ , honestly—“  and she stops, because this is not fine, this is _so incredibly far from fine_ , this is just another example of how her mind and sleep deprivation and sleeping pills have combined to screw her over once again, _just_ when she thought she was getting a handle on things—

“You’re not supposed to be here.” Her voice is blank and neutral, a three-in-the-morning tone of voice, the sort one uses when answering an unexpected phone call, the tone she used in the instant before her world upended.

“Of course I am. _You’re_ here, Rachel. Where else should I be?”

She can’t stand the look in his eyes, the confusion. “You died. You _died_ , Finn. Three months ago.”

He sighs, straightening up, taking a step away from her. “I’m sorry. I forgot.” He bites his lip, places one hand gently against her cheek. “I didn’t mean to.”

“That’s ok,” she gasps, leaning into his touch. “I’m just so glad you’re here.”

But the room blurs, and she’s alone, terrifyingly alone for an instant, before she’s thrust into a scene straight out of _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ , barricading a window as the monsters try to get in and someone shouts over her shoulder.

**

She opens her eyes to darkness traced with the ever-present glow of lights outside. Santana swears by the blackout curtains in her own little alcove, but Rachel used to appreciate the city lights that always tried to intrude through her curtains, imagining them as a faint, humming buzz that she could reach out and touch.

These nights, though, they just remind her that the Big Apple never sleeps, and she’s not doing so well in that respect, either.

She remembers Evelyn and Carl ( _we’re from Minnesota!)_ from the diner, visiting New York for their 45 th wedding anniversary. At their request, she’d sang _Scarborough Fair_ to them, admired the family pictures on their phone and in Carl’s wallet, thanked them for the generous tip they’d left, and hated them with a fiery passion as they walked out after dinner, hand in hand.

She’s jealous of senior citizens now, which may be a new low point for her.

And speaking of jealousy…

A low, shifting sound permeates the loft, even in the far reaches of her alcove. She runs a hand over her eyes and squeezes them against her face tightly.

Blaine wasn’t just in her dream, Blaine is here now, and he and Kurt have taken the middle-of-the-night silence in the loft as opportunity.

She takes a moment to be grateful that Santana is sleeping at Dani’s apartment tonight – she’d offered to let her bunk in her room so Sam wouldn’t have to sleep on the couch, but Santana had darted out after dinner with an anticipatory smile and a surprising lack of sarcasm on her lips.

Fortunately, she knows that Sam can sleep through a herd of wildebeests trampling past him (a survival skill gained from an entire family living in a small motel room, he’d told her once), so she’s probably the only person who’d been awakened by the sounds of shifting bed springs and soft, broken voices from Kurt’s room.

The many different variations and amendments of The Roommate Agreement (Kurt confessed he could only think of it in capital letters) all included the fact that none of them were virgins, and they weren’t going to wait for their roomies to clear out before having sex. Revisions to the rules included no sex in public areas (Santana), no casual nudity (Brody, and Kurt once when he was sleepwalking on Ambien), and please, _please,_ you don’t have to gag your partner, but keep the noise levels down ( _Rachel, we really don’t want to hear you verbalize your kinky side! Although now I have some ideas of what to get you for your birthday --_ ).

Earlier that day, she’d seen Kurt and Blaine with their public faces on – the same sweet, adoring gazes that were safe in the choir room and only slightly dangerous in the halls of McKinley, reminding her of the boys she remembers from high school. Later that evening, however, when Kurt was reaching up to a high shelf to bring down the colander for the pasta boiling on the stovetop, she’d noticed Blaine blatantly ogling the line of his back and ass, his golden eyes darkened and hungry.

There’s still a lot of the boy in both of them, but she can see the men they’re becoming, and it’s not like she didn’t know even in high school that they weren’t just holding hands and serenading each other. They have similar desires to other people their age, and they’re finding safe places to let those feelings show.

_Finn will always be caught in that in-between stage, no longer a boy, not yet a man –_

A louder noise catches her attention, Blaine’s voice, sharp and pleading, with a low, assured murmur from Kurt. She’s not going to bitch at them in the morning, it’s not like they’re being really obnoxious about it. She’s just caught in a middle-of-the-night realization that her dreams are the only place she’ll ever see Finn again, and the sounds of lovemaking bring back that wave of loneliness and disbelief that still blindsides her when she least expects it.

Finn… it didn’t matter if sex was quick and dirty, slow and tenderly sensual, experimenting with things she’d looked up online or seen in Cosmo and both of them laughing themselves sick in the midst of it, no matter the variation – Finn always held her afterwards like she was so fragile and precious to him.

Turning over on her side, she reaches for the drawer on her nightstand, pulling out a small velvet jewelry box.  Opens it, looks at the small plastic bag inside in the half-light through her curtains.  Uses her fingertips to gently undo the seal, and then holds it up to her nose.

The tangle of brown strands doesn’t really smell like anything, but she tells herself she can catch a whiff of his aftershave and shampoo anyway.

Carole had given it to her the day after the burial, just before she’d left for the airport. _I wanted something of him that we could keep,_ she’d whispered, a dazed look on her face.  _So just before they closed the casket, they helped me clip off some bits of his hair. I took it from a few different places so it wouldn’t show. I know it’s stupid, but I didn’t like to think of him under the ground with a big chunk of his hair missing in the front…_

She’d embraced Carole tightly, telling her it wasn’t stupid.  Never stupid.  And in her mind, if there were times she thought it just a bit weird, well, she remembered the stunned feeling when she’d touched Finn in his casket at the visitation.

He didn’t look like he was asleep. He was just dead, just a shell, and the embalming had left his skin feeling, not like stone or marble, but something pale and hard and utterly alien to the bright, living boy she’d loved.

_Get up,_ she’d wanted to scream at him. _All these people are here for you, and we shouldn’t be, and you just need to GET UP and stop this._

Magical thinking doesn’t help. She’s talked about it with Kurt also, the idea that something could happen, and Finn would be alive again, and she could keep knowing that eventually, the two of them would be each other’s home.

Even in the midst of the things in her life that are good, she’s afraid she’ll never have that home, and she can’t make her mind think of where else and with whom else she could find it.

And so some nights she doesn’t sleep, and others she wakes up at 4 am and just lies in the darkness, staring into nothingness.  And feels sickeningly envious of Kurt and Blaine, and random strangers, even pleasant 70-year-old tourists who’d been so sweet to her, because they’d had 45 years together and got to grow old together and she still wants that with Finn, even though she knows it won’t happen.

Kurt’s bedsprings are silent now. There’s just some quiet murmuring from his alcove, and she puts the bag of hair back in the jewelry box, the box back in the drawer, and rolls over, adjusting her pillow under her head.

Maybe she’ll lie awake until sunrise. But she’s sleepy enough now that she thinks she won’t. She wonders if she’ll remember another dream, or if she’ll just wake up with her mind blank and clear.

She’s not sure which possibility scares her more.

**

Her eyes open to mid-morning light, the sounds of water running in the bathroom, and the awareness that someone is standing in the doorway to her room.

_I woke up. It’s another day._

That’s been one of the hardest things to face – the everyday evidence that the world keeps turning, people still laugh and smile and work and continue, and sometimes she’s even happy.  Even in the midst of this terrible grief, she can find joy.

“Rachel? You awake?”

It’s Kurt, his long frame dressed in a faded t-shirt and loose pajama pants, his hair still tousled and falling over his forehead. He holds a tray with two mugs, steam rising from them both.

She clears her throat. “Yeah, come in, sweetie.”

He smiles as he approaches, smoothing the blankets on one side of the bed with one hand, and grabbing a pillow as he hands her the tray. “One’s coffee, one’s Earl Grey. You choose, I’ll take the other.”  She sets the tray down on her nightstand, pushes a pillow up against the headboard, and sits up, patting the spot next to her, an invitation. As Kurt sits down beside her, grabbing a corner of the blanket to cover his toes, she looks at the mugs. There’s cream in the coffee, so she takes the tea instead. It’ll be better for her voice.  She hands Kurt the coffee, and they both take appreciative sips.

“What time is it?”

“A bit past seven.  Sam’s in the shower, and Santana texted me that’s she’s going straight in to work from Dani’s place, but she’ll be in charge of dinner tonight.”

“Is Blaine awake yet?”

Kurt’s smile is tender. “No. The moment I got up he sprawled out over the entire bed. We were up late talking.”

Rachel snorts into her mug. “That’s what you call it these days? Don’t think I didn’t hear his comment about your tongue piercing.” Kurt rolls his eyes at her, and she lowers her voice, imitating Blaine. “My stud has a tongue stud. That’s so hot…”

A blush rises up his neck and over his cheeks as he smiles. “Let’s just say he really approves.”

“ _Sooo_ hot, Kurt,” she mimics, then sets her mug down before she spills it from the giggles she can’t suppress.

His eyes are bright with amusement. “It’s good to hear you like this. You’ve been a bit quiet the last two days.”

She nods, suddenly solemn again, the laughter snuffed out like a candle. “Yeah.”   She looks over at her dresser, where a small stack of pamphlets lie on top of an envelope, postmarked from Lima. “You know how we were talking after you got your tattoo, about doing things to shock ourselves out of how we’d been feeling? How it felt like we’d been in a fog?”

He nods, biting his lip. “I remember,” he whispers, a flash of resignation moving across his face, the expression she’s come to recognize as the persistence of memory.

“Well, some days the fog is gone. But it keeps coming back.” She groans in frustration. “Again and again and again,” she whispers, feeling the prickle of tears biting against her eyelids.

“Hey,” Kurt says softly, gently pulling her head against his shoulder. “I know, Rachel.” He strokes her hair gently, and his voice is soft and thick.  “You won’t be my sister-in-law, now.” He chokes back a strangled sound, and breathes deeply for a moment. “But you’ll always be my sister,” he whispers, and even without looking at his face, she knows that he’s begun to cry. She can hear it in his voice, feel it in the tension of his body pressed against her side.

“I just want this to be over,” she gasps helplessly. “I keep thinking we’re getting better, and then –“

“It swings back around and smacks us in our faces?”

“Yes.  Ms. Pillsbury would say that the five stages of grief aren’t linear.”

“She sent me some of the same pamphlets. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross can kiss my ass,” he grates out. “Yeah, it sort of helps to know this is normal, but nothing really makes it better.”

She raises her head from his shoulder and grabs a corner of the sheet, dabbing at his tears. “I wouldn’t say that,” she whispers. “You make it better, Kurt. You make me know I’m not alone in this.”

His smile is weak and watery, but it’s still a smile. She’ll take it. “I love you, Rachel Berry.”

“I love you, Kurt Hummel. You’re a fabulous brother.” She sniffs, and grabs for the box of tissues. “Here, let’s finish our drinks and get up for the day.”

When they’re done, Kurt puts both the mugs back on the tray and heads toward the doorway while she stands up and stretches. “Kurt? Wait a moment.”

He turns back toward her. “Hmm?”

“I lied to you about the tattoos.”

“What do you mean?” He doesn’t look upset, just curious.

“I did get one. I just wasn’t ready to show it to you. And I felt bad that yours wasn’t the way you wanted, so I told you I’d changed my mind.”

“ _Rachel,_ ” his eyes narrow, and annoyance creeps into his tone.

“Do you want to see it now?” she whispers in apology.

“It isn’t on your ass or your boob, is it?” he snaps. “Because if so, then I think I can live without the visual.”

“No.” She carefully raises the right side of her sleep shirt while sliding down the waist of her pajama pants. Kurt comes closer, and she can tell when he recognizes the cursive script on her hip.

“Finn,” he says softly, in understanding.

“Finn,” she replies.

He sniffs again, sets the tray down on the dresser, and pulls her into a tight embrace. “It’s ok. I get why you weren’t ready to tell me. And I’m glad you finally were.”

“Kurt?” a voice still rough with the remnants of sleep calls from the main room. “Where are you, babe?”

She feels Kurt smile against her shoulder. “In here talking with Rachel, Blaine. I’m coming out.” He turns toward the door eagerly, then looks back at Rachel. “You okay?”

“I am,” she says, putting confidence on like armor, noting the way his face lights up as he walks away toward his love.

_Oh, I wish that could be me_. She gives herself a mental shake.  _I’m not going to keep being that person_.  It’s a bad habit of hers, feeling rage when others have things she wants, and she loves Kurt too much to begrudge him his long-overdue happiness.

She grabs her robe and slides her feet into slippers, beginning her mental to-do list as she begins singing scales.  Her eyes scan over a framed picture, a stack of pamphlets, the bed she and Finn had shared for such a short time. The nightstand that holds a tiny box of hair, all the physical ephemera of a life she’s so glad she was a part of.

She heads toward the main room, singing, the music as necessary to her as oxygen. Maybe her friends will join in.

“ _Oh the world keeps spinning round and round_ –“

 


End file.
